Is it physical damage or stun? The spell description says it does physical damage but it's also supposed to be elemental damage, specifically electric which according to page 163 is by definition stun damage.

Yup, wacky right? It's P because it says P. Pay no attention to the total incoherence of the elemental rules.

It's P damage and the reason for that is that it's a fraking lightning bolt.

Thanks for the replies. That's pretty much what I was assuming but I hate it when the rules get incoherent like that.

Just wait for the bit where people use it to argue for a P sonic bolt that ignores vehicle armor. Sigh.

"I shouted so loud I flipped the Roadmaster over!" "Actually, it was your breath..."

I let players choose when they take the spell if it is physical or stun damage, which I acknowledge is a house rule.

I believe by RAW all indirect combat spells are physical.

What about the special rules of electricity, Willpower rolls for consciousness. Does it get those effects even while doing "P" damage?

Actually, I was just thinking this very fact this evening. I think it's a good suggestion, with less Drain Cost for a Stun spell, of course.

It's Physical damage with the Willpower + Body test and the disorientation. If your players want to do Stun damage, politely show them Stunbolt.

My general rule is that what's in the spell entry goes. If players want to design a new spell, then they need to worry about how elemental damage works.

The section on electricity damage in the main book was obviously written to cover things like tasers and sticking your tongue in a wall socket. The elemental damage section in Street Magic was obviously not proofread very closely.

Oh, to quickly house-rule elemental effects to something manageable, just take out the line that forces Elemental spells to do physical damage. Add a line about how Electricity spells can deal physical damage while real sources of electricity don't.

If you want people to hate Sound spells again, make people hearing through technology (cyberears, earbuds, fully enclosed helmets, etc) immune, or at least highly protected. The only thing loud noises can really do to you is damage/destroy your eardrums (which would be excruciatingly painful and debilitating and fully justify no-armor Stun damage). It's a loud sound, not the resonance frequency of people. Any good piece of future tech used for hearing would include a filter to cap the amplitude of input/output.

Having had my eardrums burst on me, I can say from personal experience that it [Content Deleted By SysOp for Profanity].

Oh, scuba diving. So painful but so fun.

Yes lightning bolt still gets the electricity effects, that's why indirect spells are so expensive to cast. Even if the damage doesn't kill them, they'll likely be unconscious for a round or two, or a least take a sharp penalty. Works against drones too(bonus if your GM rules that object resistance doesn't apply.)

To expand on my post above, any indirect spell I allow to do stun damage for -1 drain as per spell creation rules, and element types that are condusive to non-lethal damage(electric, sound, water, ect), generally have publicly available formula(in fact taser and riot bomb are fairly common lone star spells in my games). Stun fire spells and the like generally require independent research(and are kinda pointless, when they catch on fire they're taking physical damage anyways).

Epicedion, and vehicles/etc. are immune? Because that's the actual problem.

Yes it does...

Sound waves can do a LOT more to the human body than just burst an eardrum or two...

Vehicles can't have burst eardrums.



Not as they're described in the book. Elemental Sound is described as "loud." Spells are instantaneous. Sounds that can actually cause internal injury to lab rats are extremely far outside the range of hearing and the exposure has to happen over a length of time. Sonic spells are just big booms.

You're mixing up the (terrible) rules. The Sound element does *only* two things: ignore armor, and deal Stun damage. Everything else is fluff. If deaf things and/or machines were immune, it would say so. Now, this isn't a problem *if* you force it to do Stun damage, because machines are inherently immune to stun.

However, if you (by which I mean 'one', not Epicedion) let them do Physical damage, the *rules* say you've created something that destroys tanks.

So, yes, if you're gonna get all 'reasonable' and 'common sense' on things, maybe it makes sense. You'd *never* allow a Physical Sound spell. But this is Shadowrun and you should know better. The whole premise here was that you *did* allow a Physical Sound spell.

Oh, yeah, never let Sound damage be Physical. That's just asking for it. Wrecks the whole magic system.

Lolwut? I suspect the legions of people killed by electrocution would beg to differ.

Stun damage overflow, sir.

Need to add that sound damage doesn't overflow while we're at it.

Mmmmno. Pretty sure electrically-induced cardiac arrhythmia isn't overflow, not to mention electrical burns.

Extremely high damage rating? It's difficult to have a game mechanic that models an arrythmia. For comparison, getting shot in the stomach in SR doesn't exactly make you septic and die, either.

The simplest (and possibly most realistic) method is the one suggested by TheOOB: the player chooses whether an electrical spell does stun or physical damage. Since, you know, electricity can, in fact, do either.

Multiple tree's and buildings heavily damaged by lightning would like to disagree with that.

Well... there is "electrical damage" and "ELECTRICAL damage"

Taser or main power line or lightning... all different durations and powerlevels. So yeah... it can be both, in my opinion.

Also... didn't i read that vehicles are imune to electrical damage, if the gm rules it so (in case of combat drones or bigger vehcles it is pretty much guaranteed) due to isolated armor (without it needing to have mods installed for that)? I think i saw that in a book somewhere.

Thing is, all of the elemental spells in the books are Damage P. As written, the Drain Modifiers for a custom spell (Street Magic, page 163) prohibit an elemental spell from being a mana spell or dealing stun damage; they all must be Physical Spells and have Damage P. If you were to ignore the fact that elemental effects specify the damage type, you will never have an elemental spell that deals stun damage.

On the subject of electrical damage and the sort, just what is the DV of someone who's getting electrocuted (note that not everyone was killed on the first zap, which wasn't just a split second zap but prolonged exposure to the electrical current)? Also, is a real lightning bolt from the sky strictly electrical damage (I would think Electrical and Blast at the same time, really)?

Are you suggesting that you should be able to do this on a whim without purchasing a new electrical stun spell?

Oh, also folks, these are game mechanics. The fact that lightning can set a house on fire is largely irrelevant unless you want to turn part of the game into a full predictive weather simulator and starting giving odds for your characters to be struck by bolts of real lightning. There are certain things that are never going to happen except by GM fiat.

No, what he said was "choose which version of the spell you like (Physical or Stun damage) when you purchase the spell"...

The rest of your post is largely irrelevant...

So you're the one who's paid to be extra nice I see.

This just in: reading comprehension is helpful.

*Shrug* Just seems that we are going around in circles here (Yes, I know, this is Dumpshock). Lightning is Physical. No need to argue about it, since it is fact. Now, that said, there are options if you want it to be non-physical. Choose your option and move on. Everything else will sort itself out.

Actually Punch/Clout/Blast inflict stun damage and are indirect.

But, do they have Elemental Effects? I cannot remember...

Nope, thats why they can do stun damage.
Actually, now that those spells where mentioned, i got to go and add blast for all of my combat mages.

That is what I was thinking, but could not remember.

Honestly I'm not convinced that the Lightning Bolt and Ball Lighting spells do P damage. If they did P damage, then why does SR4a page 163 on Electricity Damage directly reference the Lightning Bolt spell as an effect that causes S damage? On top of that, from the spell's entry in SR4a, page 205: "These spells create and direct vicious strikes of electricity that cause Electricity damage (p. 163). Lightning Bolt is a single target spell. Ball Lightning is an area spell."; the two cross reference each other. In addition, the acid and fire based spells in the core book reference their elemental effects rather than directly stating the damage type they deal in their spell descriptions like the other combat spells.

I still say the elemental effect's damage type supersedes the damage type of the combat spell, which is used only to affect the DV of the elemental combat spell itself.

Whenever a general rule conflicts with a specific spell, or gun, or piece of tech, a good rule of thumb is to defer to the specific entry for that case. This, of course, doesn't help in godawful messes like the spell creation rules where everything conflicts on multiple levels, but it's pretty simple to give Lightning Bolt a pass on the general rule that electricity causes Stun damage.

I don't think it really matters, general vs. specific. Found this in Street Magic, page 162:
If you really want a Lightning Bolt spell that does deal P damage, can splinter trees to toothpicks and send tanks flying like a natural lighting bolt can do, just add the Blast elemental effect (ref Street Magic, page 164) to the spell for +2 DV.

Which if you reference the table in the same section, is an option that can only be added to spells that do physical damage.

Irrelevant. The note in parenthesis after Elemental Effect is poorly written. It should be written in a way that states that you choose only one of those three (Elemental, Physical, Stun) when designing a combat spell, and the damage dealt by said combat spell is determined by which, including the element you choose for the effect.

Besides, the sample breakdowns on page 167 of Street Magic of existing spells has Toxic Wave broken down, and it does not specify P or S damage and it's drain modifier in that breakdown. All of the established spells broken down on that page include all relevant DV modifiers, even if they are zero; Toxic Wave does not have a "causes Physical damage (+0)" in its breakdown, but does have "of instant duration (+0)" and "elemental effect (acid, +2)".

Because Physical, Elemental Effects cause Physical Damage by Default, according to the Spell Creation Rules. So no need to be redundant.

The point is that they shouldn't. It creates a contradiction, one that can't be ignored for the Stun elements.

But it can be ignored if you look at all of the pieces. I quoted a piece from Street Magic that pretty much says that. "... elemental spells inflict special types of damage ..." This supersedes the poorly written (like we haven't seen something like this before in the SR4 books) "must be Physical spell with Physical damage" condition. A condition that also applies to Manipulation spells with an Elemental Effect. Physical Damage is not an option to choose for Manipulation spells, only Combat spells, so by RAW you can't actually add an Elemental Effect to a Manipulation spell. Yet there are at least two Manipulation spells with an Elemental Effect right in Street Magic.

The three options for Combat spells should be noted that you can only choose one of them, not that choosing one requires the choice of another and precludes the third. Many here seem hung up on the "must choose Physical Damage part" that makes [Elemental] Aura and [Elemental] Wall, by RAW, spells that cannot exist.

It's obvious that Lightning Bolt damage is stun. Except when it isn't. But then some folks go both ways.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.